The lost generation

Last updated at 09:43 15 December 2004

This is one accolade we could certainly do without. A study of European teenagers has found that Britain is among the top achievers - for anti-social behaviour.

The research from the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs shows British teenagers reported some of the highest levels of binge-drinking, drunkenness, alcohol-related problems and drug use in Europe, with an especially striking rise in binge-drinking among girls.

Beyond this particular study, the landscape is even bleaker. Almost wherever one looks, British youth is out-performing its European counterparts in anti-social or self-destructive activities while under-performing in any real achievement.

For example, Britain boasts the highest pregnancy rate in Europe among the under-18s, and the highest number of abortions - while the number of sexually transmitted infections soared to a record 705,954 last year.

It also has the worst record on drug abuse, including the use of cocaine, amphetamines and Ecstasy.

According to Europe's drug monitoring body, Britain has the highest proportion of heavy cannabis users among 15-year-old boys and has seen a doubling of drug use among children during the past decade.

At the same time, its education standards are foundering. The country whose school system was once the envy of the world has slipped down the education league. In 2000, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ranked England eighth in maths and reading and fourth in science out of 40 countries.

These figures almost certainly over-estimated English achievement as they did not necessarily compare like with like. But in the past three years, the country has fallen to 18th place in maths, 12th in reading and 11th in science.

When all this is put together, it amounts to a depressing litany of social, moral and intellectual disintegration among Britain's youth. Our teenagers have become a lost generation. With all constraints and boundaries being progressively kicked away, their behaviour has descended into a free-for-all in which they are becoming casualties on an increasing scale.

How have our children arrived at this lamentable state? What has happened to our country that its most precious investment in the future - its younger generation - is increasingly crashing into the buffers? The immediate reasons are obvious. We inhabit a materialistic, consumer culture which has made a fetish of the self and worships at the shrine of instant gratification.

But these changes have taken place in other countries, too. So why has Britain become a world leader in teenage disorder? Our children have been taught to expect there are likely to be only minimal consequences for anti-social behaviour.

In the U.S., the doctrine of 'zero tolerance' on crime and drugs and the encouragement of self-restraint in premature sexual activity have all helped create a general expectation of the need to establish clear boundaries for behaviour.

In Britain, we have gone in precisely the opposite direction. Instead of refusing to tolerate anti-social behaviour, we feebly flap our hands at it.

In many American states, alcohol is forbidden under 21. Instead of similarly restricting drunkenness among the young, we seem to be encouraging it by introducing legislation that allows all-night drinking. Instead of a war on drugs, we seem to have a war on the law on drugs.

Cannabis has been downgraded as a dangerous drug, despite its often catastrophic effects. Who can be surprised, therefore, that its use has accordingly gone up? Drug use in general has been rising since the Nineties, ever since first the police then the Government started sending out ambiguous signals about drugs and the law.

Instead of promoting sexual continence among the young, we have sex 'education' which seems designed to encourage sex acts among pubescent children which would not be out of place in a brothel, along with the casual provision of abortion and the morning-after pill.

Instead of supporting and encouraging married family life, we have had forced down our throats the false doctrine that all family lifestyles are of equal value.

The resulting fragmentation of the family is perhaps the greatest single cause of the rise in drug-taking, drinking and other self-destructive behaviour arising from the increasing distress and confusion of children.

In education, the impact of the comprehensive school and the pursuit of the 'all must have prizes' philosophy has down-graded all qualifications and eroded standards.

More insidiously still, the curriculum has been progressively emptied of content. As a result, truth and objectivity have been replaced by opinion and feelings; overcoming obstacles and coping with setbacks or failure have been all but written out of the script; and what children are taught has to be 'relevant' to what they already know, instead of introducing them to experience beyond their own lives.

So, far from teaching children how to adapt to a world with others in it, British education now teaches them they should expect the world to adapt to them. Instead of transmitting a culture which serves the interests of the nation, our education system has become the principal motor of the 'me society'.

With personal choice and self-realisation trumping everything else, our young people have been taught that authority is bunk and that the most important consideration is that no one's feelings should be hurt, including their own. As a result, it has become almost impossible to criticise anti-social behaviour without being damned in turn as 'authoritarian' or 'heartless'.

We are told it is not wrong for teenagers to have sex but it is wrong to tell them premature sex is a bad idea. We are told it is not wrong to have a baby out of wedlock but it is wrong to disapprove of lone parents. And we are told it is not drugs that cause crime and social destruction but the law that makes them illegal.

The result is a mind-bending moral inversion in which the idea of responsibility has been twisted into its very opposite.

That is why we have been treated to the spectacle of the Home Secretary claiming he is acting 'responsibly' in seeking to destroy another man's family, tear apart the two children in that family and redefine responsible fatherhood as the 'McDonald's dad' version of weekly visits and financial support.

The question still remains why British society is so much more irresponsible than elsewhere.

The first reason is surely the decline of organised religion and the part played by the Church of England in embracing, rather than fighting, the erosion of moral standards.

The second is the impact of Britain's secular church, the Welfare State, which has created our 'me society' of rights and entitlements and eroded the sense of duty and obligation that keeps a country civilised.

The third is the collapse of national self-belief and the loss of Britain's sense of purpose - so that the biggest selling point for regenerated cities is now all-night entertainment based on drinking and gambling.

With an adult culture drifting into this kind of decadence, it is hardly a surprise that it has produced a lost generation - the children it has abandoned - who have become the anti-social champions of the world.